Flight of the Tormentors

They emerged from the horizon, as sunset turned the toxic sky to a field of red spears. A long shriek rolled over the wastelands.

The familiar sound made Alakai’s scales bristle. He tucked his wings close, and dived into the charred treetops. With the wind chasing him, his landing sent a splintering echo through the blackened and brittle trees. Soot billowed around him.

He waited, held his breath until it burned against his throat. It took a long minute for the Tormentors to appear overhead.

Emitting their high-pitched screech, the eyeless behemoths swam across the bruised sky with their many barbed tendrils moving like smoke behind them. The leader of their pod yawned wider, its whole gelatinous body wrinkling. Fangs like broken pillars gleamed with the last crimson life of the day. Alakai almost choked on his flames as the Tormentors’ shadows crawled over him.

One of the smaller Tormentors broke away from the pod, tendrils shuddering and fanning out from its pulsating body. Alakai stared up in horror, knowing he should move, but also knowing he could never win against a pod of Tormentors if he was heard.

Desperate, he cast his thoughts out to his roost-mate. But Rakene slept, still recovering from her earlier patrol.

The smaller Tormentor went still. A thick mist glowed around it, then Alakai heard the crunching of broken branches. He dropped lower to the blackened ground, and one of the Tormentor’s barbs slammed down less than a claw’s length from his nose. Long as a goat’s horn, it stuck into the ground, shivering. The Tormentor’s foul poison oozed from it as the gelatinous surface hardened into an iron-like husk.

Alakai glanced up. There was a blast of agony. A barb stabbed into his back, between his wings. It seeped between his scales, and hardened into a vicious thorn. He held his snarl at the pain radiating out from it. He could still fly back to the roost. The healers would seal his wound with their blue fire, and he’d survive. If he was quick.

The Tormentor swam to its pod. Alakai took a small step, his claws crushing bits of burned trees. The screeching of the Tormentors began to fade. He took another step, wincing as the movement pushed muscle against the tip of the barb in his back.

Another sound came from ahead, filling the void left as the Tormentors retreated. The sound paralysed Alakai. It wasn’t possible.

He sent another thought to Rakene. Although they’d been bonded together for almost a century, he doubted she’d be able to untangle the frantic mess of his mind in that instant.

A child. A human child. Crying.

Overhead, the screeching of the Tormentors stopped. Alakai lifted his head, which sent another bolt of pain through his spine to the point of his tail.

The lead Tormentor, the gigantic one at the front of the pod, pulled all its trailing tentacles around itself. It slowly tilted its cavernous mouth toward the charred forest.

It couldn’t be a human’s cry. They’d been gone for centuries now, dying out as lost wanderers still dazed by their own extinction. He’d only heard the stories from his father, who’d served with the humans in their last war. Their kind had helped the humans kill each other, but then the victors had let their bombs touch the sacred roosting grounds. The dragons had all agreed: humans had to perish.

In the centuries since, life had returned to the blasted land. Tormentors had come across the wastes, bloated monstrosities which destroyed everything they touched. Mutant things had come scrabbling out of the toxic sea. The dragons roosted in their mountains, and watched over their territories, monitoring the Tormentors’ migrations, but they did not interfere with the world now. Regret for what had happened to the humans weighed heavy on them all.

The cry came again, shrill, desperate. It could only be a human. Alakai’s father had described their childhood sounds. They did not communicate by thought as the dragons did.

He should leave it, he knew. As miraculous as it was a human child had survived so long, he could not risk attracting the Tormentors.

At the same time, the cry of the human child pulled at him. Was the world not lonelier with just dragons to patrol it? Could humans not help them rebuild what had been lost?

He sensed Rakene still slept. He sent her another thought: clear and concise. Love.

Above, the lead Tormentor began to float down to the ground. It would take some time to descend. The smaller creatures of its pod circled among the wispy clouds. With their eternal screeching silenced, the Tormentors were somehow even more ominous.

Alakai trampled through the burned forest. His wingtips carved through ancient tree bark, making thinner trees crash down. His claws raked into the earth. Every stride put hot pain out from the barb latched in his flesh. He imagined the slow poison leaking into his blood.

He risked looking up. The lead Tormentor tilted its maw his way. Its enormous body reverberated with a shrill call. The smaller Tormentors stopped circling. They turned their eyeless faces to Alakai. They were waiting for him to take flight.

He charged on, heedless of the ruined branches scratching his scales. His feet made the ground shake. He panted, and orange flames lapped around his lips.

The child stepped out in front of him from behind a fallen tree. Alakai reared to stop from crashing into the small human. It was barely as tall as his knees, but it stared up at him with no fear.

Alakai slammed back down on all four feet. Flames gusted between his teeth as he tried to catch his breath. The shadow of the Tormentor darkened over them.

The child blinked. A boy, Alakai realised, his hair long and matted in ropy curls around his grimy face. He carried a backpack almost as big as him over a thick coat, torn in many places. He wiped his cheeks as Alakai stared back at him.

Alakai took a step closer, and the boy didn’t run. He lowered a wing, hoping the boy would understand. Without the thoughts clear between them, Alakai suddenly understood why violence had come so easily to the humans. He twitched his wing. The boy didn’t move.

The fetid air of the Tormentor’s mouth wafted down over them. The tops of the tallest trees cracked, and splinters fell.

The boy blinked again. His dirty hands hung limp at his sides. Alakai took another small step toward him, and the boy drew away. He almost snarled in frustration.

We failed you before, he thought, let me try to help you now.

The boy trundled closer, wobbling in boots that seemed too large for his feet. He went onto all fours, and crawled over Alakai’s lowered wing. His little hands were soft against the toughened scale. He stopped on Alakai’s spine.

Alakai stretched his wings out. Agony burned through him, and he let out a moan. His wings drooped. The barb had hooked into muscle, making the slightest movement excruciating. He felt the boy’s feet shift on the scales of his back.

Alakai turned his head, and saw the child wrap his arms around the barb stuck in his back.

How could he warn the boy of the poison? He started to growl, but fresh pain tore through him.

The barb ripped loose from his flesh. The curved tip glinted with poison. Then the boy threw it to the forest floor. He stared into Alakai’s eyes again.

Already, the pain softened, dulled, retreated. Alakai flexed his wings. The boy hunkered down behind his neck, tiny arms clinging to Alakai’s scales.

Alakai swung around. One of the Tormentor’s tentacles lashed down in front of him, shearing up a strip of black earth. Alakai doubled back. Another tendril whipped over his head. He glimpsed hundreds of barbs flashing by, each as big as the human child.

More and more tendrils slammed down. Alakai weaved between them. One grazed at his back leg. Another cut into his tail. He drew back from a tentacle lashing for his throat, and charged through a gap in the creature’s barbed limbs. The Tormentor’s screech chased him.

He stretched his wings wide. More trees collapsed as he crashed through the forest. Soot plumed from every step. The boy’s hands clutched tight to the back of his neck.

He flapped his wings. A jolt of immense pain rolled along his spine. Alakai growled, and the boy started to cry again. Trees exploded around them. Behind, the enormous lead Tormentor was ripping its way through the burned forest. Above, the rest of its pod fired their fusillade of barbs.

Alakai roared, and thrust himself upward. His wings caught the wind. He soared over the blackened treetops, as darkness began to avalanche across the horizon.

The Tormentors screeched. The pod shot across the sky toward him, and he flapped his wings harder against the pain of his spine.

One drew close. Its tentacle whipped at his side. Barbs tore scale from skin, and Alakai whirled. Blood drizzled from where he’d been hit. The Tormentor jolted toward him again, readying its tentacles, opening its mouth in a screech of triumph.

Alakai opened his own mouth. Red fire enveloped the Tormentor’s face, licking over its gelatinous carapace. Its tendrils swung wildly. As it dropped away, Alakai accelerated toward the mountains.

He didn’t look back until the screeching of the Tormentors vanished into echoes. When he did, he found the darkening sky free of their stain. The boy still clutched to his neck, face pulled down against the wind. He realised the human wouldn’t be used to such speed, so slowed as he came to the mountainside.

His roost was halfway up. Rakene was still curled in sleep amid a bed of moss, her tail wrapped around her. Alakai landed softly on the outcropping beside her. The silhouettes of other dragons appeared above. Thoughts crowded him.

The boy looked up. The clamour of thoughts went silent. Slowly, the dragons descended to join Alakai on the outcropping. He saw wonder and amazement in their faces.

In the silence, a single thought suddenly came to him, its voice timid and small.

Thank you, it said. And the boy smiled at Alakai.